James Burke - Crusader's Cross

"Can't do it."

"Then please go somewhere else for a while."

And that's what I did. As far as the water cooler, my face burning as though I had been slapped. Then I went back into her office, the door hanging open behind me.

"You want my shield, just say it."

"You're always psychoanalyzing other people. Why don't you look inside your own head for a change?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Bootsie died on you and it made you madder than hell. Your daughter is gone and every day you wake up, you're scared you'll drink again. So you figured out a way to climb on a cross, a place where it's safe and people can't do anything else to you. I don't think you're going to like it up there, bwana."

The week was not going well. Worse, Clete had called early the previous morning and, without thinking, I told him Jimmie had gotten a lead on Lou Kale and that Kale might be running an escort service out of Miami. That was a mistake.

By Tuesday afternoon Clete was standing at the registration desk in the lobby of an old ten-story stucco hotel on the beach in Hollywood, Florida, decked out in shades, his pale blue porkpie hat, a tropical shirt printed with bare-breasted hula girls, white polyester Bermuda shorts, and blue tennis shoes threaded with brand-new white laces. He carried a set of golf clubs on one shoulder, a flight bag on the other, registered as C. T. Perkins from Gulfport, Mississippi, and paid cash for his room.

The walls of the hotel were spiderwebbed with cracks, the patio in the center of the building spiked with weeds, the potted jacaranda dying from lack of water. But the view of the ocean from his open window on the top floor was magnificent, the overhead fan adequate to cool the room, the salt air wonderful. Clete propped his feet on the windowsill and punched in the telephone number of the Sea Breeze Escort Service. Down below, the tide was sliding high up on the sand and children were running into the waves, leaping in the froth that sucked back over their tanned bodies. On the third ring Clete found himself talking to a man who called himself Lou Coyne.

"You got the referral where?" Coyne said.

"Stevie Giacano, in New Orleans," Clete replied.

"Oh yeah, Stevie Gee. In the Teamsters, right? How's ole Stevie doin'?"

"Not too good. He's dead. But he always said your service was tops."

"We like to think so. So you're hosting a convention, that's what you're saying?"

"I'm about three blocks away from your office. What if I come on down there and maybe we work out a group rate? You give finder fees? I'll take mine in trade."

"Tell you what, I'll meet you in a half hour at that little outdoor joint by your hotel, the one looks like a straw hut."

"How will I know you?"

"You won't," the man who called himself Lou Coyne said, and hung up.

Clete read the newspaper in the lobby, then strolled down the boardwalk to a frozen daiquiri stand, one with a thatched roof, set among a grove of coconut palms. A red-headed woman with a Hawaiian skirt hooked over her bikini sat on the stool next to him and ordered a daiquiri. She looked around at the beach, then said, "Hi."

"Hello," Clete replied.

"Beautiful day," she said.

"They don't get any better."

"On vacation?" she said.

"I wish. With me it's all business," Clete said. He paid for her drink, pushing the five-dollar bill across the counter to the bartender with the heel of his hand, not asking the woman if it was all right. "C. T. Perkins is the name. I'm staying at the hotel, down the boardwalk there."

Her eyes were green and there was a smear of lipstick on her teeth. Her breath smelled heavily of cigarettes, and she had a habit of repetitively touching the pads of each of her fingers with her thumb on her left hand while she sipped from her drink.

"I bet you're in the construction business," she said.

"How'd you know?"

"You've been out in the sun a lot. You have big arms. There're calluses on your hands. But you're probably a supervisor or engineer."

"I used to be a general contractor. Now I put shopping mall deals together. Whatever blows up their skirt, that's what I do."

"You up for anything this afternoon?"

"Could be. You got a cell?" he said. She took a gold retractable pen from a canvas tote and wrote a number on a napkin. "Thanks for the drink. Keep that number under your hat, will you?" she said.

"They couldn't get it from me at gunpoint," he replied.

Clete watched her walk away, her face turned in a regal fashion toward the ocean, her hooked skirt molded tightly across her rump. She passed close to a man who wore linen slacks and a purple shirt with white suspenders, and who combed his hair as he walked toward the daiquiri stand. The two of them seemed to exchange glances, then the man sat at a table among the coconut palms, grinned, and pointed a finger at Clete. "Come talk to me, big man," he said.

Clete carried his daiquiri to the table and sat down. Lou Coyne's hair was the color of gunmetal, greased, long on the neck. His facial skin had an unnatural shine and hardness to it, as though his youth had been surgically restored at the cost of the softening influences purchased by age.

"If you knew Stevie Gee, you must know his old sidekick, Benny Frizola. Some people call him Benny Freeze," the man named Lou Coyne said.

"Never heard of him," Clete replied.

Lou Coyne grinned again. "So if I understand you, you're organizing a convention here – builders, Teamsters, subcontractors, those kinds of guys – and you need some escorts to show them the city?"

"Not exactly a convention, just a little P.R., get everybody lubricated and in a free-spending mood. Maybe around Thanksgiving. We'll be in town for five days," Clete said.

Lou Coyne's cheeks were sunken, as though he were sucking the spittle out of his mouth. His ears were small, the way a club fighter's get when he's been too long in the ring. "So, up front, you know an escort service offers nothing besides sightseeing, companionship, a walk on the beach if you want it, these are nice girls we're talking about here, we're clear on all this?"

"I respect what you got to do, but I don't have time for people's bullshit," Clete said.

"What'd you say?"

"I can put together a package in Vegas for the same prices I get here. Except some of the guys like to go deep-sea fishing. Besides, the seafood is better here. What can you do for me, Lou?"

Lou Coyne pulled on his nose. "Slip on a swimsuit. Let's take a dip," he said.

Clete went back to his hotel and changed into his Everlast boxing trunks and rejoined Lou Coyne on the beach.

"You going to swim in your clothes?" Clete asked.

Coyne began walking toward the surf, dropping his suspenders, pulling off his shirt as he went. "I ain't got a problem with the human body. Other people do, it's on them," he replied.

He removed a weighted-down copy of the Miami Herald from someone's beach blanket and laid his shirt, shoes, socks, and finally his folded slacks on top of it. He stood raw and white in the sunlight, wearing only a black silk thong that was little more than a sling for his phallus. While other bathers gaped, he flexed his back and rolled his shoulders. "Let's hit the waves, big man," he said.

They crashed through the breakers until they were chest-deep in the water, in a flat space between the swells, the beach behind them biscuit-colored and lined with palm trees and hotels that had fallen into decay.

"You thought I was a cop?" Clete said.

"Me? I love cops. I got all the original episodes of Miami Vice"

"Need your prices, Lou."

Lou Coyne pursed his mouth and thought. "I can give you ten, no, fifteen percent discount on the item. In terms of girls, I got the whole rainbow. The client acts like a gentleman or the service is discontinued. Before the discount, the various prices are as follows -"